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I clicked on it with some trepidation because this was near the end of the preprimaries where Kerry was positioning himself against Howard Dean, who was the overwhelming front runner. Kerry did then defend his vote, but he explained it in a way that was 100% in keeping with what he said when he voted and later when he ran against both O'Reilly and Beatty last year. He actually put it in a longer historical perspective - of wanting Saddam held to account in the 1990s. Even when he rejected his vote, it was because he admitted that by putting trust that Bush would do what he said, he did assume some responsibility for Bush later having that authority to use, regardless of his motives. His convoluted (not as clear as he said it was)statement on whether it was a mistake does end up as a truthful rejection of going to war and a rejection of there being sufficient threat to do so, but Rose had to force that out of him. In the context of the time and an understanding of the Catholic (Christian?) importance of the words, "last resort", this was a strong admission from a man wanting to be President. Kerry was obliquely saying that the US was fighting an unjust war. Additionally, I did not realize that his concern of "occupation" and his efforts to minimize (repeated in his Afghanistan comments, echoing his Vietnam comments) went that far back. Both of these were beyond what Dean (or Obama) were saying in 2002/2003.
Other interesting things were:
-how uncomfortable Rose was with Kerry's more even handed middle east ideas. This is significant as Rose's audience is, I think, NYC based and Rose is pro Israel. Kerry did not pander here as many would have done.
- Kerry's comments on Dean show how easily the republicans would have torn him apart. The fact is that Kerry was right that the Democrats forced the addition of the tax cuts at the bottom and although the economy as a whole was reasonably strong, Dean's position - that he would have raised the taxes of everyone who paid taxes would have been devastating. In addition, contrary to all of DU, Kerry's Iraq position was more consistent than Dean's. (Kerry does not detail Dean's positions, but Dean made statements in the early fall that were MORE aggressive than Kerry's - calling for giving SH a deadline (I think)6 months to disarm. Dean also did say he would have voted for Biden/Lugar, which was better - and was Kerry's preference as well. If anything, what Dean proposed himself would have been easier to use - as Bush was claiming in March 2003 that SH had not disarmed completely. In both cases, Bush would have misused the resolution. The difference is Kerry stuck with the complex position he had - which was harder than having a simple position. Dean suddenly in early 2003, acted as if he had always been 100% against any use of force against SH. Not only was that not true, it left him very open on national security. The majority of the country had not yet really rejected the war. If they had, Kerry would have won.
- One nagging thought. Reading Kerry's statement and the expanded statement and questions Wednesday, he really would have preferred not expanding the troops as radically as Obama is doing. His question went directly to his probable opposition on that. There also appears to be real concern that Obama will follow the policy that Kerry spelled out clearly - but Obama didn't - on clearing opposition only where the Afghanis can come in behind. I have not watched all of the hearings, but I have not heard any of the 3 witnesses or McChrystal speak of that policy directly. In fact, much of the media coverage has referred back to the McChrystal plan and has actually made it just an issue of troop numbers, where they argue that NATO may make up most of the remaining 10,000 to get to the "magic" 40,000. (Only CNN's Michael Ware showed where each country was located in Afghanistan on a map that showed the relative strength of the Taliban. We are in the Taliban areas, while almost all of NATO are in areas where the ethnic groups hate the Taliban. In addition, they are restricted in what their countries allow them to do. So, the numbers game is disingenuous.)
This has somewhat the same feel as the IWR. While I would love to think that he is correct in trusting Obama, it really looks to me as if Obama has been more in line with the hawks. I always thought, given the reference in his IWR speech of how he and others did succeed in moving Bush to go to the UN, to get inspectors in, and to go to Congress, that Kerry and others (Biden?) likely hoped that they would have more leverage with Bush if they took his words in good faith by giving their votes. Kerry is closer to Obama, but it is in Obama's interest to give the impression that Kerry (and Biden) has influence, if only to neutralize a strong voice. (I do see that he likely wanted to avoid the obvious charge that he refused to give the President the leverage to do the things that he (Kerry) had been calling for since before Bush was in office.)
While Kerry's IWR statement and subsequent statements did allow him to point back and argue what his actual position was, the fact is that for many it was crystallized and defined by a vote that he very clearly hates, though recently, many articles refer to Kerry's 2004 campaign as anti-war - which is too simplistic as well. Here, the black/white nature of our media's analysis has already referred to him as a supporter. For now, they have included some indication of how qualified that support is - and it is true he is not against it as Feingold and Menendez are. I hope that Obama agrees with Kerry on using soldiers only where there is Afghan backfill - as it makes sense, but if he doesn't or he fails to get Gates and the Generals to actually do that, I suspect that Kerry will speak out and that the media will start their flip flop nonsense - even though Kerry would have been 100% consistent.
This is not very coherent. I think because it caused me to think two diametrically opposite things. One is that on complicated issues there really are usually no simple unqualified statements that would be good policy or analysis - and Kerry has the integrity to avoid them for the most part. (Kerry is wonderful at finding compelling ways to say things, if he had the personality flaw needed to be a demagogue, he could have been an exceptional one, but at the loss of thoughtfulness and seriousness.) The second is that Kerry's nuanced complicated honesty is easy to twist against him in today's environment.
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